Is Hexus.net Blind ?

[Rys]

can you cut the melodrama and sighs and stop trying to make your mistake look like less of a mistake?

If there's an obvious difference between the two, I can't see it. There's more final texture detail in the wall textures in the ATI shot, due to the viewer being slightly closer.

That is incorrect, and was the only point of this thread.
*sigh*
The thing is, its becoming more and more apparent that many reviewers just cannot seem to understand things. For instance, you compare framerates between FX cards and Radeons in Serious Sam, but make no mention that ATI offers more detail...i honestly wonder if the loss of detail in the FX screencaps gives them an unfair performance advantage. I'd say yes.

There's only loss of detail between them due to viewer distance. Now that I have a quick and easy way of creating identical screenshots in SS2, I'll redo them.

The review only talks about the floor texture (the easiest with which to see mip transitions and the filter in question). I mention wall detail to explain viewer distance again, since it's obvious they are different.

As for the melodrama, people latched on to things I tried to explain in the review text, apparently ignoring the review text altogether. It annoyed me, I apologise.

Doomtrooper: I've explained both things in other threads. The 5800 article should never have been published and my reasons for using the 5700 in the 9600XT article are well stated in other threads. If that's all there is to show bias, I'm pretty happy.

Rys

 

[Doomtrooper]

Then why was it ?? Journalists are nothing without integrity....

 

[Dave Baumann]

Rys,

You might want to check out this for comparing IQ:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8612

 

[digitalwanderer]

Then why was it ?? Journalists are nothing without integrity....

You obviously never read the Inquirer...

 

[nelg]

The review only talks about the floor texture (the easiest with which to see mip transitions and the filter in question). I mention wall detail to explain viewer distance again, since it's obvious they are different.

That is kind of like beind run over by an elephant while looking for a needle in a hay stack.

 

[Rys]

Rys,

You might want to check out this for comparing IQ:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8612

Thanks for the link. I prepared two new SS2 screenshots and amended the review with them. They are of equal size and viewer distance this time

Anyway, my comments about the filter quality are still valid, using The Compressonator to compare both new images (getting a Difference output from the tool), shows precious little difference between them, especially in the floor texture. I've stated that in my opinion, the ATI shot does look better, but that at the same time, the NVIDIA shot doesn't look bad. Just ever so slightly worse.

I'll keep using the tool, I've been hunting for something that showed an XOR style difference between two images for a while.

What's your opinion on 52.16 IQ?

Rys

 

[Althornin]

The thing is, its becoming more and more apparent that many reviewers just cannot seem to understand things. For instance, you compare framerates between FX cards and Radeons in Serious Sam, but make no mention that ATI offers more detail...i honestly wonder if the loss of detail in the FX screencaps gives them an unfair performance advantage. I'd say yes.

There's only loss of detail between them due to viewer distance.

That makes zero sense, considering the ATI shot was MORE detailed and was FARTHER away.
Explain how getting closer makes one lose detail?


But, regardless, you fixed that.
One other question:

Analysing a static screenshot is a different beast to watching a moving picture.

you use this to imply that its even harder to see a difference in-game, while i find its exactly the oppposite. Crappy moving mip-lines are easier to see in motion.

 

[gokickrocks]

That makes zero sense, considering the ATI shot was MORE detailed and was FARTHER away.
Explain how getting closer makes one lose detail?

the camera is far sighted with poor near sightedness

you use this to imply that its even harder to see a difference in-game, while i find its exactly the oppposite. Crappy moving mip-lines are easier to see in motion.

i would have to agree

 

[Xmas]

Rys, why don't you use PNG instead of TGA? PNG uses lossless compression and can be viewed in any modern browser.

 

[martrox]

Hexus isn't blind....they just need glasses!

Didn't your mothers tell you to stop doing that or you would go blind? Just decided to take a pause, huh?

 

[Pete]

Explain how getting closer makes one lose detail?

Consider it a free DoF effect.

 

[T2k]

Why are you surprised? Hexus was always the most ridiculously biased site, sometimes even against the real world realities. Business as usual: I'm pretty sure it's worth it for them, in terms of income...

EDIT: grammar

Please, show me our rediculous bias, because I'd love to see examples of it. I've been writing there for 3 years and I've yet to be biased towards anything, at least not conciously. So be my guest, show me our bias, mine in particular (I'm not the only one who writes there)

As for income, I've personally yet to make a penny from HEXUS. I currently don't get paid for writing there. I get to play with nice hardware when it comes in for review, but I'm definitely not earning a living there. Thanks for your completely unfounded speculation, it's utterly entertaining.

Rys

My friend, take a look on EVERY FX-related 'article' you/your colleagues did. Almost each of them has something interesting approach, towards NV cards...

Unfortunately (err, lucky me ) I was off for this weekend - I could be only second to Doom... he posted our favourite quote from last year...

Ahem... you're saying you do this for free?

 

[T2k]

Doomtrooper: I've explained both things in other threads. The 5800 article should never have been published

And you guys have no time to remove that since 27th January 2003, huh? Actually you started but this action finished very soon: only graphs been removed since then... nice try. Now NOBODY can judge anything from them.

? Talking about conspiracy theories...

and my reasons for using the 5700 in the 9600XT article are well stated in other threads.

May I have a link, pls?

If that's all there is to show bias, I'm pretty happy.
Rys

I don't like to turn this thread to some journalist (PRE)school ...

PS: I always been pretty harsh on unbalanced writings or mispresentation - especially if they tried to act like a 'very independent' piece of something.
As per melodrama: sorry to say this but you should have been learned one of the main rules: you write articles - and I judge them. Even if I'm blind, bad and evil...

 

[Rys]

Doomtrooper: I've explained both things in other threads. The 5800 article should never have been published

And you guys have no time to remove that since 27th January 2003, huh? Actually you started but this action finished very soon: only graphs been removed since then... nice try. Now NOBODY can judge anything from them.

? Talking about conspiracy theories...

and my reasons for using the 5700 in the 9600XT article are well stated in other threads.

May I have a link, pls?

If that's all there is to show bias, I'm pretty happy.
Rys

I don't like to turn this thread to some journalist (PRE)school ...

PS: I always been pretty harsh on unbalanced writings or mispresentation - especially if they tried to act like a 'very independent' piece of something.
As per melodrama: sorry to say this but you should have been learned one of the main rules: you write articles - and I judge them. Even if I'm blind, bad and evil...

The 5800 article isn't my doing, I don't have control over whether it's removed or not. As for the missing images, there's a load of reviews we have, that don't have pictures any more. Our image server was hacked, we lost all of our image content. Only stuff that we had backups for were restored. Randomly choose an article from our database, sooner or later you'll find another with no pictures, there's over 100 like that I think.

And yes, I do this for free. I write for my own enjoyment, to learn about hardware. I often get to hang on to hardware for an extended period for my own use though, that counts for something I guess.

Search for posts by me to find the thread on 5700. I used the card because I had nothing else to hand (yes, my fault, but that's the reason nonetheless).

We learn from our mistakes I'll convert the .tga's to .png later today, I deemed .tga more suitable since it's the native capture format and was conscious of losing image data due to conversion.

Rys

 

[Genghis Presley]

Anyway, my comments about the filter quality are still valid, using The Compressonator to compare both new images (getting a Difference output from the tool), shows precious little difference between them, especially in the floor texture. I've stated that in my opinion, the ATI shot does look better, but that at the same time, the NVIDIA shot doesn't look bad. Just ever so slightly worse.

I'll keep using the tool, I've been hunting for something that showed an XOR style difference between two images for a while.

When using The Compressonator for investigating the differences between two images it often pays to bump up the diff image gamma (using the lightbulb icons). Small differences are difficult to spot as diff images are inherently dark. Obviously the differences still need to interpreted with great care but bumping up the gamma allows them to be more clearly seen and often allows patterns within the diff to emerge.

GP.

 

[OpenGL guy]

I'll keep using the tool, I've been hunting for something that showed an XOR style difference between two images for a while.

XOR is about the worst possible way to compare two images.

Imagine: 0x80 XOR 0x7F. Result is 0xFF!

 

[Rys]

I'll keep using the tool, I've been hunting for something that showed an XOR style difference between two images for a while.

XOR is about the worst possible way to compare two images.

Imagine: 0x80 XOR 0x7F. Result is 0xFF!

Wrong expression, but you get what I mean Thanks for the tip about gamma GP. Is the Difference output of Compressonator what I should be looking at, where non black pixels show the difference between the image pair?

If so, I'll start and use some commentary on it in the future. I remember 3DMark2001 Result Browser doing something similar, when it compared IQ shots to the refrast output.

Rys

 

[Genghis Presley]

I'll keep using the tool, I've been hunting for something that showed an XOR style difference between two images for a while.

XOR is about the worst possible way to compare two images.

Imagine: 0x80 XOR 0x7F. Result is 0xFF!

Wrong expression, but you get what I mean Thanks for the tip about gamma GP. Is the Difference output of Compressonator what I should be looking at, where non black pixels show the difference between the image pair?
Rys

Yes. The Compressonator calculates the diff image as the absolute difference between the two images for each channel, so where pixels are identical between two images the diff image is black.

GP.

 

[Mintmaster]

Rys, I see a clear difference between the (updated) images. Just flip back and forth, and you can clearly see the diff. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. However, this probably has to do with fudging with LOD or AF level by the drivers rather than the mip-map issue we see.

I find the best place to see AF and filtering problems are in racing games with a low camera like a bumper cam or hood cam. When the road has lane stripes, then you can really see little things.

Consider a road lane divider stripe created by a texture that's one texel wide and say 20 texels long.

Now, if you had bilinear filtering, within a mipmap a road strip will get narrower in the distance due to perspective. When you cross a mip-map, then suddenly the stripe will get wider, blurrier, and lighter. Then it will get narrower with distance due to perspective again, and after the next mipmap boundary widen and lighten again, and so on.

Not only are you seeing a mipmap boundary in the stripe, but the edge of the stripe has a discontinuity as well. With true trilinear filtering, however, you wipe out this discontinuity. With NVidia's pseudo-tri filtering, you'll get a bumpy edge on the road line.

I'm not sure if anyone can envision this as well as I can. If you guys really want, I can make a small app to demonstrate this, but it'll have to be worth my while (maybe some screenshots in a review or even in some threads). Just PM me and I'll get it done within a week.

Good filtering does more than just make mipmap boundaries go away.

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

Rys


I downloaded both the newer image (the ones currently on the website as of November the 3rd 2003).

I used a program called ACDSee.

I used to Shrink zoom option when an item is viewed full screen.

I looked at both pictures and the Trilinear Filtering IS CLEARLY EVIDENT...so damn evident I was gonna to &*^* my pants with excitement.

Also the texture details on the Radeon card are soo superior over the nVidia card that you'd think you were wearing glasses (when you don't need them) by looking at the blurryness of the nVidia shot.

Peace.